Behind-the-wheel travel has increased significantly as the spring festival travel rush is entering the peak period right before the arrival of the Chinese New Year.
The Second Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge saw a traffic flow of more than 110,000 vehicles on Monday, an increase of 50% over normal working days with long pileups seen before the toll gates with free access offered for five times.
The daily traffic flow of the bridge is expected to see 120000 vehicles on Tuesday to reach the pinnacle before the festival.
The average daily traffic volume of Jiangyin Bridge also exceeded 110,000, which was close to saturation. The fleet of vehicles lasted nearly 3 km.
Backlog of vehicles was seen at Sutong Yangtze River Bridge while the traffic volume at Taizhou Bridge almost doubled Sunday from the previous days.
The major express highways in the province have seen a substantial increase of traffic volume with the flow of traffic in Shanghai-Nanjing expressway reaching a historic high of 170,000 vehicles on Sunday alone.
In the meantime, medium and short-distance coach travel has turned hectic with coach tickets fallen short of supply in Nanjing, Suzhou and some other places. Coach stations across the province has added temporary buses and opened more ticket windows to cope with the rising flow of passengers.
The railway travel remained stable with the peak period expected to last for one more week or so.
China’s transportation authorities are prepared for the annual spring festival travel rush when hundreds of millions of Chinese return to their hometowns or travel around the country, putting huge pressure on the transportation system.
About 2.98 billion trips are expected to be made during the 2018 Spring Festival travel rush, known as the Chunyun, between February 1 and March 12, according to the National Development and Reform Commission or NDRC.
The number of road trips is projected to reach 2.48 billion, a 1.6-percent decrease from last year, while train trips are likely to top 390 million, up 8.8 percent year on year, the NDRC said in an earlier statement.
(Source:Jiangsu International Channel)
